The Harkin Summit: Innovating for Inclusion

Doubling Disability Employment In A Changing Landscape

Senator Tom Harkin (ret.)

Senator Tom Harkin (ret.)

In 1974, Tom Harkin was elected to Congress from Iowa's Fifth Congressional District.His energetic, person-to-person campaign carried the day against an incumbent in alongstanding Republican district. In 1984, after serving 10 years in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives, he challenged an incumbent senator and won. Iowans returned him tothe Senate in 1990, 1996 and again in 2002. In November 2008, Senator Harkin madehistory by becoming the first Iowa Democrat to win a fifth term in the U.S. Senate. Heretired from the United States Senate in January 2015.

Senator Harkin was tapped by Senator Ted Kennedy to craft legislation to protect thecivil rights of millions of Americans with physical and mental disabilities. He knewfirsthand about the challenges faced by people with disabilities from his late brother,Frank, who was deaf from an early age. What emerged from that process would laterbecome his signature legislative achievement — The Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA).

The ADA has become known as the "Emancipation Proclamation for people withdisabilities." The legislation changed the landscape of America by requiring buildingsand transportation to be wheelchair accessible, and to provide workplaceaccommodations for people with disabilities. To preserve the intent of the ADA afterseveral court rulings weakened its standards, Senator Harkin and Senator Orrin Hatch(R-UT) introduced the ADA Amendments bill to ensure continuing protections fromdiscrimination for all Americans with disabilities. It was signed into law in September2008. In September 2009, Senator Harkin became chairman of the Senate Health,Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Tom Harkin was born in Cumming, Iowa (pop. 150) on November 19, 1939, the son ofan Iowa coal miner father and a Slovenian immigrant mother. To this day, he still lives inthe house in Cumming where he was born. In 1968, Tom married Ruth Raduenz, thedaughter of a farmer and a school teacher from Minnesota. Tom and Ruth have twodaughters, Amy and Jenny, and three grandchildren.